The Devil May Cry
by Raven Hazlewood
Summary: Nikki Faye was raised by Mary Winchester. She grew up knowing she was adopted & never living in the same place for more than a month. Now, five years after Mary's death, she is haunted by demons and monsters from her mothers stories. She teams up with Dean and Sam as she tries to figure out her past while coming to terms with the fact the world is ending, and only they can save it.
1. Chapter 1

**14 Years Ago**

"Come on!" I run, trying to catch up to the group of boys ahead of me. None are my age, a few a little older and one almost four years older than me. My legs are a lot shorter than theirs, and its hard to keep up.

I follow them down the worn back path in the woods. All of the trees are bare, and the crisp air cuts through my thin jacket making me shiver. Every step is crunches because of the leaves, and chirping adds to the noise.

The older boy in front stops, giving the rest of us time to catch up. Hes standing on a ledge, looking down into a large hole in the ground. Theres an abundance of leaves down there, along with a small, red ball.

"Look what you did!" The older boy shouts, turning to face a smaller boy with tear stained cheeks. "Look!" He screams, pointing at the ball, unreachable in the hole. The smaller boy starts crying again.

"I-I'm sorry..." He stammers, and the older boy walks over to him, pushing him closer to the hole.

"Go get it then."

The smaller boy turns to look up fearfully at the older one. The other three boys back away, and I follow them, tripping over a tree root and falling to the ground. The older boy crosses his arms as I get up, and the smaller one starts sobbing.

"I c-can't!" He cries, "I'll g-get stuck!" He's not wrong. The holes big enough to fit everyone here, but its steep. He could get down easily enough, but wouldn't be able to climb out.

I want to leave. My mom had told me to go outside and play, so I had walked over to the park across the street from the motel we were staying in. Its there that I had met this group of boys, playing a game with the red ball. I was-at five-by far the youngest. The small one now being pressured into climbing in the hold had kicked the ball that had gone sailing over the trees, landing here.

But now, all I want to do is go back to the motel.

"Get!" The older boy yells, pushing the younger one, who is now sobbing uncontrollably, closer to the edge.

"Stop!" I yell, pushing past the huddled group of boys watching fearfully. The older one turns to look at me, his face red.

"You have something you want to say?" The boys takes a step towards me, and all of the sudden the air gets ten times colder.

"I'll go get your ball." I declare, and his eyebrows go up. I can see him considering the situation, then walking over to the younger boy and shoving him roughly out of the way. He turns back to me, a smile stretching across his face.

"Go ahead." He gestures to the hole.

I look at the small boy who had fallen when the older one pushed him. He was drying his eyes, looking up at me. I felt a rush of something, and marched forwards to the edge of the hole.

It looks a lot deeper close up.

I take a deep breath and get on my hands and knees, lowering myself into the pit feet first. I make it all the way to where I'm holding onto the edge by my fingertips, but I'm still a good five feet from the bottom. I clench my jaw, and drop.

I land with a thud. My shins prickle because I landed on my feet and, it turns out there was about two feet of leaves from where I was. So, instead of falling five feet, I fell about seven. It hurts, and its hard to move with all the leaves getting in the way. I crane my neck up, looking at the faces of the boys who are peering over the edge.

I manage to make it to the middle of the pit, and grab the red ball. "Throw it up!" The older boy calls down, and I pitch it up to him. He catches it easily and laughs. He tosses it from hand to hand as I make my way back to the side of the pit. I reach my hand up.

"Help!" I call, and he looks down at me, the smile getting wider.

"Thanks!" He yells down, holding up the ball. His face disappears, and in a second the rest do too. All thats left is the tear stained face of the boy I helped.

"Help me!" I yell up to him, my voice becoming frantic. He looks over his shoulder, then back at me.

"Sorry!" He calls down, and then I can hear him running to catch up to the other boys.

It gets even colder.

"Help!" I scream, and hear the echo of my own voice. After a few seconds, I go crazy. "Help me! Help! Someone!" I scream until my throat is raw, then fall down and bury my face in my hands.

It feels like I'm there a long time, and soon it starts to get dark. I stand up and yell, "Help!" but its quieter than before and my voice cracks.

I start to panic, and out of nowhere scream. A high pitched, loud, never ending scream. I close my eyes and scream louder, hoping someone will hear me.

*Click*

I open my eyes, and look up into the eyes of a large man pointing a gun at my head.

I look wildly around, and see the hole a good ten feet behind me. Behind the man are two boys, one a little older than me and the other about the age of the boy who had terrorized the younger one earlier.

"Dean, take Sam out of here." The man says, his voice gruff. I start shaking, but this time its not because of the cold. The older boy takes the younger ones hand and leads him away, both of them casting confused looks over their shoulders until they're out of eyesight. When their gone, the man growls, "You want to explain to me where you came from?"

I stare at him, trying to remember climbing out of the pit. The last thing I remember was screaming. In response, I just point behind me, unable to form any words. In the dim light of dusk, I see him narrow his eyes. "You're going to tell me exactly what you are in three seconds, or I'll blow your brains out regardless."

My mouth drops open as he says, "One." I don't believe him. This man won't kill me. He has to be the one that helped me, right? "Two." Hes just trying to be scary. He won't really..., "Thr-"

"John!"

I spin and see my mother running towards us. The man drops the gun, his eyes going wide. "M-mary..." he sputters. My mom rushes over to where I'm sitting, and picks me up. I bury my face in her neck, and hear the man talking again. "How...what are you..."

"John..." My mommy says, she sounds sad. "I didn't know you'd be here." She adjusts me so I'm on her hip, but I keep my face buried and listen.

"Is that..." He asks, and I feel her head nod. "She just appeared...I didn't know..."

"Dean? Sam?" My mommy asks. It sounds like shes sad.

"They're here." The man says, I peek at him through my moms golden blonde hair. "Is she really...?" He gestures at me. My mom nods again.

"You need to go." She whispers, her voice cracking on the last word. I think shes crying. I bury my face again, and hear the crunch of leaves as the man retreats.

When I can't hear his footsteps anymore, I ask, "Who was that?" I look at my mom's face as she dries her tears.

"Just a friend Nikki. Just an old friend."


	2. Chapter 2

**Present Day**

I'm jolted awake by the sudden stop of the bus. I peel my face away from the cold window, blinking away sleep as I look to see what happened. A tall lady in a pantsuit is rushing off the bus, one hand on her hat to keep it from flying off as the doors open and a large gust of freezing December air rushes into the small metal interior of the bus. I shiver, pulling my thin jacket closer to my body.

I'm not the only one feeling the effects of a dropping temperature. I watch as a man in a suit shivers and spits sware words at nothing, and a harried looking lady begins tugging a multicolored hat onto a toddlers wiggling head. Besides them there is a lady a seat away from me dressed in ill fitting clothes showing too much skin in the wrong places talking loudly on a cell phone. A low cough makes me turn my head to the back seat where, seemingly passed out, a man reeking of booze and dressed in shabby, mismatched clothing resides.

The joys of public transportation.

I settle back down into my seat, fingering my charm bracelet restlessly. It makes a small ringing noise as the charms bang against one another but nobody on the bus seems to notice or care. The bus lurches slowing back into motion with a groan and I lay my head back and close my eyes, trying to block out the incessant yapping of the woman on her phone.

I spend a good forty five minutes of listening to the lady on the phone talk about a thousand celebrity names I don't recognize and my bag banging against my leg because I can't find somewhere to set it before the bus pulls into another, thankfully less jolting, stop.

I watch in dull fascination as the man in the suit and the woman with the little boy began walking up the the aisle up to get off. Another, louder cough reminds me of the man in the back who, when I turn my head to look at him, is sitting up. He looks groggy and disoriented but before I can spend anymore my of time thinking about the man my attention is pulled back to the front of the bus.

Walking- no, strutting- onto the bus is a young man who would put every self respecting male model to shame. His choppy brown hair falling carelessly into dark, smoldering eyes that regard everything they meet like it was beneath him. His tan looked bone deep despite the fact the sun hadn't shone since mid October and his chiseled features were the face of perfection.

He walks down the asial of the bus with an air of superiority and I would not be surprised to learn he had money. Upon closer inspection I realize everything about him, from his haircut to his shined shoes, screams wealth.

He comes to stop next to the lady on the phone who is no longer talking but staring with open mouthed awe. He regards the seat next to her coolly as he had done everything else, and she looks like shes going to wet herself from excitement until he passes her without a second glance.

My heart speeds up when hes stops and sits in the seat directly across the aisle from me. I feel blood rush into my cheeks and I look purposely away so he doesn't catch me staring. When the bus goes back into action I sneak a glance in his direction and see him looking at me, a smile playing across his lips. My cheeks go from warm to flaming.

Normally I'm good at this sort of thing. Sometime after I turned sixteen I started noticing how older men sometimes looked at me differently. I was used to dealing with divorced fifty year olds looking for a little fun, and I was good at dealing with them and putting them less than wholesome ideas to rest.

I am, apparently, not as suave when faced with seductive men only a few years older than myself staring at me on busses.

"Hello." He says, his voice deep and rich. Praying I don't come off as childish, I smile.

"He-" I start, but before I can finish the word the homeless man in the back starts coughing again. Its not the mildly distracting cough from few minutes before but a low, horrible cough ripping from deep within his chest. I turn again to look at him, his face obscured by his hands as he hacks into them. "Are you OK?" I call to the back of the bus, but despite his lack of answer I can tell he's not when coughs so hard he's rammed back into his seat. He takes his hands away from his face and they, along with his mouth, are covered in blood.

"Of course I'm alright..." The man in the seat across from me says, his eyebrows coming together in a frown.

"Not you!" I shout, feeling the familiar flutter of panic deep in my stomach. The man in the back is definitely coughing up blood now, the sticky red stuff coming out of his mouth in a stream. The Calvin Klein model turns to look at the back of the bus, frown becoming deeper.

"What are you-" Before he can finish the bus slams to a stop, sending me sprawled onto the floor.

I push myself up, my head pounding. Broken pieces of handrails surround me. The man I had been talking to is slumped over in his seat, his head bleeding profusely from a gash just above his eye. Just as I'm about to check for a pulse on his unmoving form the bus shakes, throwing me back into my seat. I look up to see if the homeless man is alright, but what I see instead causes my stomach to lurch and threatens to make me pass out.

The man's stomach has now been replaced by a gigantic, gaping, bloody hole. His lifeless form is slouched in the seat, blood trickling out of both his eyes and mouth.

I'm dreaming.

Clawing its way out of that hole is a massive worm larger than a small car with rows upon rows of jagged teeth lining a circular mouth. All along its body are more rows upon rows of sharp spikes. I think it's supposed to be white but covered in the mans blood its a deep, dark red.

This has to be a dream.

A scream gets caught in my throat. I can't breath. It feels like I'm choking. My entire body freezes as my lib's lock up despite my brain screaming at me to run. I hear a high pitched scream from behind me. The worm turns what I'm assuming is its head towards the source of the noise.

Oh god let this be a dream...

A long, black thing shoots out of its mouth and in the time it takes me to blink the lady who had been on her phone is pulled into the worms gaping jaws.

It does not swallow her whole and her death is not clean. She doesn't fit into the monsters mouth, and the teeth start moving in circles ripping her to shreds. She screams for a few seconds. A high scream more like a pigs squeal than an actual humanoid sound. The scream is suddenly cut off as blood splatters everywhere, and I feel some of the warm sticky stuff hit my cheek.

It's this that pulls me out of my stupor. A rush of adrenaline courses through my veins forcing my body into action that it had been incapable of doing. I don't remember standing up but the next thing I know I'm upright. Every sense is heightened. I can hear the sickly, wet sound of the worm chewing. I can hear the screams now emitting from the bus driver from behind me. Everything seems brighter.

My ears start ringing.

I don't know why I do it. Its stupid. It won't help anything.

Despite knowing all that I throw a piece of the broken handrail at the worm.

Its 'head', for lack of a better word, whips around to me. I drop to the ground faster than I knew I could move as the long, black tongue-like thing shoots out of its mouth. A sharp piece of broken glass I land on makes a deep gash in my palm, but the pain doesn't register as it should.

The ringing in my ears gets louder.

A shrill scream comes from the front of the bus. I glance back and see that the long tongue, having missed me, has latched onto the bus driver. She grabs one of the unbroken handrails but it rips from the side of the bus as she flies towards the gaping jaws of the monster.

The ringing in my ears turns into an mind splitting high note of some dreamlike chord.

I feel like my head will explode from the pressure.

I reach up and grab the long, black tongue above me. As soon as I touch it I feel my entire body becoming limp. I don't remember why I'm here...

It would be nice to just...

Lay down...

Stop...

Fighting...

A bright flash of blue light blinds me. An bestial howl emits from the worm and the place where I'm touching the tongue bursts into blue flames. The tongue breaks in two, the half holding the bus driver going limp and dropping her, the other half returning to the shuddering worms mouth. The fire disappears into the worm's mouth as its jaws snap over its wounded tounge. .

With the ringing gone I'm able to focus. I jump up, but unsteady on my feet and fall almost immediately back down. The pain in my body and my gashed hand, all which seemed so far away, hits me like a wall. I see the man, looking much less attractive with blood covering his face, waking up. He blinks a few times, apparently disoriented, but his eyes go wide as he notices the blood.

"Oh god..." He whimpers. I push myself up onto my hands and knees. Thats when my battered body registers the shaking.

The worm has gone from shuddering to convulsing. Its rocking the entire bus violently. Before my eyes its entire form bursts into bright, searing blue flames. A heat wave emits from it, catching my sleeve on fire.

The new pain sends another rush of adrenaline smashing through my body.

I jump up yet again, still unsteady but I manage not to fall. With a strength I didn't know I possessed I wrench the man out of his seat where he is still staring dumbstruck at the burning worm.

I run down the aisle, stopping only for a second to get the bus driver standing. The entire back of the bus is burning with blue fire. The heat is overwhelming, yet there is no smoke.

The entire back of the bus is melting.

I run towards the front, not entirely in control of my actions.

My arm is burning.

I reach the double doors to the bus to find them locked.

I smash the glass with my fist, the entire metal contraption that we are in threatening to burst apart.

We run out of the bus, the only thing registering in my brain is that the snow seems unnaturally red.

The blast throws me twenty feet forward.

Sirens wail, and everything goes black.

"Yes." I say, holding an ice pack to my pounding head and wishing everyone would just leave me alone. The pudgy officer before me doesn't seem to think my answer is good enough, because despite promising that was his last question he stays stationary.

"Are you positive thats what you saw?" He inquires, narrowing his eyes at me. I sigh and pull the fluffy blanket one of the EMT's had given my closer to my body. I wish some of those people would come back, they hadn't asked stupid questions and had given my hot cocoa that I was in desperate need of a refill for.

"Yes. I am one hundred percent, absolutely, completely sure thats exactly what I saw." I spit at him. His frown deepens but he puts away his little notepad and waddles over to the other officer inspecting the ruins of the bus.

Over about a hundred feet to my left a large crowd has emerged, everyone staring at the wreck and jostling closer to the police tape trying to get a better look or take a better picture. Taking up a lot of that room is a news truck along with a camera man and a reporter lady bundled up in a huge, form fitting coat that must have cost a fortune.

"This, we have been told, was an act of terrorism by an extremist protesting the use of oil. He detonated a bomb strapped to himself using a small remote, destroying bus 693 and killing two passengers, one in the initial blast and one while on the way to the hospital. We have not been informed of the identity of the protester but we..." I tune out the reporters broadcast after that point. I'm not sure how she got ahold of the bullshit story I told the officer so soon, but I'm happy nobody seems to be questioning it.

I've repeated the same story a million times over the last hour. Man shows bomb to everybody, bus driver stops, man pushes button, blast is small but starts a fire, we all run. The End.

Of course then I had to questioned over things I didn't care about such as 'blast radius' and 'What his voice sounded like when he announced he had a bomb'. I'm a convincing liar and it was easy enough to fabricate stories to convince exhausted looking officers who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else on a Friday night.

I hadn't been allowed to leave because apparently the Federal Officers on there way here wanted to question me. I was the only survivor still capable of speech, the bus driver having died on the way to the hospital and the handsome man apparently in shock.

I felt my chest clench when I thought of the bus driver. I didn't know her but all I could remember is when I'd gotten onto the bus two dollars short of fare she smiled kindly at me and, with a wink, slipped two dollars of her own money into the small tin used to collect fares.

I also remember the picture she'd had on her dash - the picture of her hugging two small girls.

I blinked back tears when my stomach lurched and I doubled over, throwing up into the bucket placed in front of me.

I've thrown up twice already and EMT's told me I had a concussion. I hadn't been rushed to the hospital because, despite the gash on my had that one of them had bandaged, my vitals were fine and the roads were too dangerous for anything but but life threatening emergincies. My concussion didn't qualify. .

I probably did have a concussion- the blast did cause me to hit my head and I've been told about twenty times its a miracle I survived- but that wasn't why I kept throwing up.

Every time my mind reminded itself about what happened on the bus my stomach lurched and I almost passed out.

I wasn't real. I'd decided that. Maybe I had ate something bad and it's caused me to hallucinate. Gigantic, man eating worms didn't exist.

But one thing still haunted me.

"Nikki, come here with that, you don't need to look at those pictures." She reaches down and picks me up. I'm still clutching the book that had fallen off the table, staring transfixed at the image it had opened to.

"What's that?" I ask, pointing at the picture. Mommy frowns and takes the book, snapping it shut. She smiles warmly at me.

"Just a scary worm. Dont worry, its not real." She hugs me close, her perfume making me feel warm and sleepy.

"Miss Faye?" a deep voice inquires, shocking me out of the disturbing day dream. Standing above me is a man dressed in a suit with a mop of brown hair and bright, brown eyes. He was tall, a few inches over six foot, and pretty cute. He looked tired, but in a different way from the other officers who had interviewed me.

"Yes?" I ask, unsure of what else to say. Normally I'm good with witty retorts, but my head hurts enough I don't care about that.

"I'm Agent White with the F.B.I." He holds out a badge down to me, and before he can put it away I snatch it. He looks surprised and mildly annoyed as I inspect the badge closely. Theres no reason for taking it, even if it is fake I wouldn't know, I just felt like taking it.

"Why is the F.B.I. investigating this?" I ask, handing Agent White back his badge. He frowns, tucking the badge back into his jacket.

"The F.B.I. deals with a wide range of crimes." He says. I cock an eyebrow but he continues anyway, "Miss Faye-"

"Call me Nikki." I cut him off. He doesn't seem fazed.

"Nikki," he clears his throat, "Can you tell me exactly what you saw?"

"I already told the other officers, talk to them." I snap, my voice hard.

"I know theres more to the story." Agent White says calmly. I feel the sick feeling coming back.

"You don't understand..." I mutter, running my non bandaged hand through my hair and avoiding eye contact.

"I think I understand more than you know." I look back up at him. He looks sad.

"I really don't think you do." I whisper so quietly I can hardly hear myself.

"Try me."

"It..." I mutter, wishing I could just leave, "It wasn't real. Just a scary worm. But not real." The creases between his eyebrows deepen.

"Worm? What-"

"SAM." A voice yells from near the wreck. I look over and see another man dressed in a suit, clutching a piece of paper in one hand and walking quickly over to us.

"Dean!" Hisses Agent White...Sam. The new guy, Dean, looks upset. Really, really upset. His jaw is tightly clenched and he thrusts the piece of paper out at Sam.

"What the hell is that, Sam." Dean growls. His face was a mask of rage but his eyes don't match with their sad gaze. Sam certainly seems sad upon looking at the paper.

"I don't know." He whispers. He takes the paper from Dean, holding it gingerly. I can see the edges are burnt, but it seems mostly intact. Dean is looking from the paper to Sam.

Dean, who I'm assuming is Agent Whites partner, is just a tad over six foot, still shorter than Sam, with dirty blonde hair and bright green eyes. He has a five o'clock shadow and hair shorter than Sams but not even near buzz cut short. Hes definitely attractive, but its hard to focus on that right now when he looks like hes going to take out his gun and start shooting people.

I stand up, still wobbly on my feet but getting better, and lean in to look at the paper. As it turns out its not just a piece of paper, but a photograph.

Its a photo of a pretty woman with long, blonde hair, light sea blue eyes, and fair skin.

"Hey!" I shout, getting mad. "Thats mine!" I try to grab it but Sam yanks it out of my reach. Both him and Dean stare at me.

"What do you mean it 'yours'?" Dean asks cooly, taking a step towards me. If hes trying to be intimidating it doesn't work.

"It means its mine." I take a step towards him so we're less than a foot apart.

"Then who's that in the picture?" He growls, his eyes flashing.

"Mary Winchester, my mother." I pull out the word mother, and about a million emotions flash onto Dean's face in the space of second.

He decides to go with rage.

I never realized how cold the metal barrel of a gun until one was pressed to my forehead.


	3. Chapter 3

"We're almost there." Sam says, turning to face me in the backseat of the car. I cuss at him through the gag but it comes out more like a strangled choking noise. I shifted around trying to get more comfortable in the handcuffs holding my hands behind my back.

Dean had opted not to pull the trigger, but instead handcuff, gag, and temporarily blindfold me. When he had finally ripped the blindfold off I was in the back of what I was guessing was a muscle car from the late sixties, early seventies.

Personally, I'm pretty ticked I've been kidnapped by F.B.I. agents (though I'm really starting to doubt that story) in an area swarming with cops and news reporters.

Something like that really causes one to lose faith in the justice system.

We've been driving for about six hours but I have no idea of knowing for sure. I was about ready to start beating my head against the window because, for the last six hours, Dean had been blasting the same five AC/DC songs through the speakers. If that wasn't bad enough he would also periodically start singing along, always extremely off key.

Some twenty rounds of Highway To Hell later the car slows down and pulls into a long, winding dirt driveway. I'm craning my neck, trying to determine where we are but all I can see is rows upon rows of dirty, broken down cars. "Bobbys not going to know." My head snaps around to the front where Dean is very aggressively jamming the buttons on the radio, thankfully turning it off.

"He's going to more know than we do." Sam says, looking back at me and frowning deeply.

"Woes obee?" I slur, the gag making it hard to form any coherent sounding words. Neither Sam nor Dean answers me, but we pull up in front of a baby blue house, paint chipping in numerous places to show the brown wood underneath. Theres a flowerbed, long overrun by weeds, lining the house along with a few hedges that were in dire need of trimming.

Standing in the doorway to the house is a man holding a shotgun pointed at the car. Dean parks in front of the back door, but the man doesn't lower the gun. I can't make out the details of his face because hes partially hidden by shadows in the doorway, but I can tell hes in his late fifties early sixties. Hes wearing a hat, but thats all I can make out besides the shotgun, which seems much shorter than the legal limit, that is pointed right at us.

Dean gets out almost as soon as he stops the car. He jumps out, hands up, but leaves the door open so I'm able to hear what's happening despite my vision being obscured by the dirty car windows. "Bobby!" shouts Dean, walking around the car. I watch as the man lowers the gun and steps out into the light, hand up to his eyes as he squints at Dean.

"What are ya' doing here?" He shouts with a heavy southern accent, eyes turning to Sam as he too gets out of the car. I struggle in the handcuffs, trying to reach the door handle. I don't see more than a light dusting of snow here, but it's still cold and Dean turned off the heat when he got out.

"We have someone you need to meet." Deans says, and I look up to Sam who has just opened the back door. He puts his hand on my shoulder, trying to help me get out.

"Geff ov ov ee!" I growl, the gag still making my words sound slurred. I shrug off his hand, but getting out of the car with my hands handcuffed behind my back is a lot harder than I thought and I hardly manage to stay upright, let alone make anything resembling a graceful exit. Sam smirks, and I shoot him a hard look but he's already looking back at Bobby.

Bobby takes one look at me, frowns, then swings the shotgun to face me. "What is she?" srowls Bobby, finger on the trigger.

Something tells me Bobby isn't as patient as Dean had been about pulling a trigger, and thats saying something, so I probably had about five seconds before he blew my head off regardless.

Its really hard to plead your case when you have a gag stuffed in your mouth.

"A vont noo wat eor dokn abot!" I shout, my words coming out worse than I expected them to. Bobby doesn't lower the gun, but Sam steps calmly between the gun barrel and myself.

"Bobby, we don't know what she is, but please try not to kill her until we do." Sam says tiredly. Bobby lowers the gun, but not enough to make me feel comfortable.

"Take the gag off." Dean calls over to Sam, who walks behind me and unties the gag. As soon as its off I take a few deep breaths through my mouth and spit, the gag having tasted like rotten fish.

"I don't know what you guys are talking about, and I'm a human, obviously." I spit, looking between the three.

Bobby lowers the gun to his side but continues eyeing me suspiciously. "Well get inside." He stalks back through his door and Dean follows close behind. Sam nods at me and starts walking towards the door, but when he sees me still standing in the same place walks over, grabs my arm, and forces me to follow him, Dean, and Bobby.

We walk through the creaky back door that leads to a hallway. The house looks like one you'd see on Hoarders. Its insanely cluttered with a mismatch of so many items I can't tell what's what. Boxes upon boxes line the wall, some overflowing with books, others paper, and even a few that contain at least thirty different types of knives.

Bobby leads us, Sam still with a tight grip on my arm, to a room that resembles something close to a library. Theres a desk, cluttered with all sorts of strange looking instruments and three gallons of what looks like water, shelves line the walls, filled with everything from books to samurai swords. Theres a large tattered couch on one of the walls, even more books and papers covering its surface. On both the floor and ceiling there is a strange pattern, something resembling a pentagram.

Dean walks over to me and I pause, expecting him to say something or to unlock the handcuffs.

Instead he pushes me into the middle of the pentagram looking thing and shouts some weird chant in a language that's definitely not english.

The awkward silence that follows is made even awkwarder by Dean smiling and looking proud, like he accomplished something. I step calmly out of the weird pentagram thing, and Deans face slips into a grimace.

"Why did you bring her here?" Bobby sighs, and nobody answers because Dean is still scowling at me and Sam is staring at me thoughtfully. "She would have even been able to enter the house if she had been any of the normal stuff. And she wouldn't be able to look like that if she was any of the abnormal stuff." Bobby continues, scratching behind his ear.

"What stuff-" I start, but none of them seem to hear me.

"The blast should have killed her." Sam finally mutters, "And she had...she had this." He walks over to Bobby, handing him the photograph of my mother. I feel my cheeks turning red, and Bobby stares at the photo for a few seconds, his expression softening.

"How did she get it?"

"We don't know but-" Dean starts.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here!" I spit. They all look at me with ranging expressions from rage to mild amusement. Bobbys finally the one to break the silence.

"Alright." He says, walking up to me and holding the photo in front of me. "How did ya' get this?" I clench my jaw, wishing I could take it from him. I can already see a wrinkle in it that hadn't been there before. It was my only photo left of her. I blink back tears, wishing they would just go away.

"Its mine." I say, my voice hard. I tried not to cringe in pain from my hand, my aching body, or the pain inside from seeing the picture of my mother wrinkled.

"I didn't ask who's it is, I asked where you got it."

I open my mouth to answer, but before I can say anything I'm splashed in the face with water. I cough, blinking the water out of my eyes to see what happened. Bobby has a hold of Deans arm, and one of the gallons of water on the floor spilling the rest of its contents.

The photo Bobby had been holding a second before, my photo, is on the ground, water splashing onto it and causing the ink to run off and making it little more than a blob of color.

The low ringing in my ears is back, drowning out the noise of Bobby and Dean yelling at eachother. It gets higher, and higher pitched until I can't think straight. Everything becomes brighter, colors blending together swirl together to form a bright, white light.

The explosion knocks me down, and I land on my hands and knees. Books fall of shelves, and I hear a window shatter.  
"What the hell!" Shouts Dean. I look up and see him picking himself off the floor, staring behind me. I turn my head and see the window behind the couch as been completely shattered, shards of glass covering the couch.

"How did you get out of the cuffs?" My head snaps around to Sam, who had been propelled back into a bookshelf. It takes me a second to register what hes saying, but I look down at my hands, one covered in a red bandage that needed changing. .

My hands. My hands no longer bound by cuffs behind my back.

"I don't know." I whisper, staring at my wrists. They were red, like they'd been burnt. "I-I didn't..."

"Sam! Dean!" barks Bobby who is pushing himself up from the ground from behind the desk. "You two alright?" A chorus of 'yeahs' follow the question. Bobby, now standing, walks over to me. I look at him, terrified. "What's your name?" he asks, his expression unreadable.

"N-Nikki Faye." I whisper, a million questions running through my head at once. "What's happen-"

"Nikki Faye?" He barks, his eyes flashing. I nod, unable to make a noise. Instead of becoming angry, like I expected, his eyes soften and all at once he look's years older. He takes off his hat and runs his hand through what little hair he has left. "Hell kid." He whispers. "You were supposed to be dead."


	4. Chapter 4

"Dead?" I ask, my voice trembling.

I took a moment to quietly admire had quickly my day had gone from bad to shit storm.

This morning I'd woken up in a sleazy motel, my biggest fear the policeman standing just across the street handing out flyers with my face plastered across the front. In panic, I'd stopped at the first bus stop I'd come too and hopped on the a bus headed to anywhere.

Now, not even ten hours later, I was standing in a house in the boonies with three strange men six hours after almost getting eaten by a gigantic nightmare worm. A unreal monster that, according to everything I'd ever heard or learned about the world, should not exist.

The absolute last thing I needed was for this old hick to be telling me I was supposed to be dead.

"Bobby?" Dean asks, walking up behind him but keeping an obvious one foot distance. Bobby ignores him completely.

"How old are you?" He looks at me, his expression a mix of confusion and sadness.

"Nineteen." I whisper, the tremor in my voice worse than ever. My wrists burnt with a dull, low throbbing. I felt light headed. My vision is still blurry and getting worse..

"Bobby do you know her?" Dean questioned, but his voice sounded far away and echoy. Black spots in my blurred vision blinked in and out, making my head hurt worse.

"Ow..." I whisper, but no one pays me any attention as I sink back to the ground, all of them caught up in their own argument.

"What the hell, Bobby?" Dean says, and I hear something glass break but I don't know what because I'm squeezing my eyes shut, trying to get rid of the headache.

A screech begins in the dark recesses of my brain like a fleeting memory I'm trying to hold onto. The screech builds like a physical force, forcing me to double over in pain. I let out a almost silent, pitiful moan as its volume builds but thats all I'm able to manage before I feel like my head will explode.

"Who turned on the radi-"

The loud screech erupts from my head and rushes into the room like water rushing from a broken dam. The full force of the inhuman screech now not entirely in my head I'm able to force open my eyes and see Dean, Sam, and Bobby all on the floor again, faces contorted in pain and hands pressed tightly over their ears.

_...she can't hear..._

My stomach flips, and I hear a very quiet voice barely audible over the bestial screeching.

_...give the girl a chance...she can't hear us!...Just try..._

Its not one voice. It two, maybe more. The indistinguishable whispering of many voices gets louder, but I don't recognize a single word of the language they're speaking. The screeching gets louder, the physical weight of it forcing to the floor. The light coming from the windows a bright white and steadily becomes brighter, forcing me to shut my eyes.

_...shes just a child...NO...she can't do this..._

Definitely more than two. Five or six at least. All at once the whispering turns into screaming, shattering the weight of the screech and sending a chill down my spine.

_...RUN. LEAVE. THEY'RE COMING...kill him!...RUN. YOU HAVE TO LEAVE...cut it off! Break the connection!...HUR-..._

It ends almost as quickly as it began. All at once the crushing physical and metaphysical weight vanish and I'm left with nothing more than a vivid memory of the pain. I open my eyes wearily, blinking slowly when their not met with an onslaught of blinding white light.

"What the hell is Cas thinking." I hear Dean growl and shift my gaze to where he and Sam lay sprawled on the ground, shaking themselves off as they get up. "He should know pretty damned well that we can't hear him."

"Maybe he forgot?" Sam says lamely, shrugging and handing Bobby his hat which Bobby takes gruffly and slams onto his head.

I push myself to my knees, the small action causing my vision to go black for a second. I keep my eyes shut and breath slowly. Its a good ten seconds before I speak, "Why did they tell us to run?" When I don't get an answer I open my eyes to find all three pairs of eyes on me, all with mixed levels of confusion.

"What?" Sam finally says walking towards me and helping me to stand. I grip his arm and teeter unsteady for a moment before answering.

"They...well one of them said to run." I reply with frown. "They were screaming." I look around, nothing but confused faces looking back at me.

"You actually heard someone?" Bobby asks, his mouth twisting into a bitter frown. I see Dean open his mouth to speak but before he can and before I answer Bobby continues, "C'mon, I need a drink." He turns on a heel and heads through the doorway.

"What about..." Dean says, pointing to me. Bobby turns his head and looks from Dean, to me, back to Dean.

"Shes with us." He mutters as he turns away and starts walking back to the kitchen. Dean clenches his jaw but follows, leaving Sam and I alone in the ravaged room. I look at him, hoping he won't let go of my arm because I doubt I'd be able to stay upright without help. He's frowning, staring hard after Dean and Bobby.

"What is happening?" I ask, my voice quiet and scratchy. I don't realize he heard me until he responds.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

In all the confusion I'd forgotten how good food tasted. It wasn't until Bobby set a plate overflowing with sandwiches down in front of me did I realize how starved I was. I'm halfway through my third turkey and cheese before I take a breath and look up to the three men staring at me.

Well, two. Dean was sitting in the chair across the table from me, eating with as much ferocity as I'm sure I'd been only moments before. Sam and Bobby on the other hand were both standing close to the kitchen counter and whispering to each other. I finished the bite I was on and looked down at my plate, once again remembering the trouble I was in.

I still didn't know any of these men. I still didn't know where I am.

I still don't know if I'm going crazy.

That thought sent a shiver down my spine. I'd seen crazy people, not crazy like your fifth grade math teacher was "crazy" either.

Real, honest to God, homicidal crazy.

I didn't want to become that. Again.

I set down the sandwich and said, "So. What now? And what was that...thing. That just happened." Bobby and Sam turn to me and I see out of the corner of my eye Dean look up. Bobby walks over, pulls out the chair between Dean and I at the circular table and plops into it. Sam walks around the table cautiously and calmly sinks into the chair across from Bobby.

"Where is Mary Winchester?" Bobby asks calmly, his gaze never shifting from mine. I take note how he doesn't answer my second question. All the same, I feel a thousand emotions well up inside of me at the name and I break our stare first, blinking back tears.

"Dead." I mutter, taking a deep breath as the pain recedes. The three of them seem to let out a collective sigh. "Why do you care?" I spit, looking back at Bobby.

He has tears in his eyes.

That alone pulls me up short. Then, from across the table I hear, "She doesn't know shit." I look over at Dean, staring at me with a rage I'd never seen on a human face.

"You don't know shit." I growl, unable to think of anything witty or clever to say. "Mary Winchester died five years ago and how the hell do you-"

"What?" Sam says, his face green. The rage slips from Deans face and is replace by a confused sadness.

"Nikki." I turn to face Bobby who is looking at me with his eyebrows drawn together, "Mary Winchester died five years ago?" He asks, putting extra emphasis on the five. I nod slowly, my heart refusing to beat in a steady rhythm. Bobby sighed and gestured to Sam and Dean, "Nikki, this is Sam and Dean Winchester. Mary Winchesters two sons."

When I was nine I'd been playing on a small, beat up playground. My mother had been with me and had refused to let me go on the monkey bars because they were so high up. The second her back was turned I'd scrambled up them and, on the third bar, fallen off. I'd hit the ground on my back and was unable to move or take a breath for what seemed like forever.

Thats what happened now.

I looked at Dean, then Sam, and started to see small resemblances. Sams face shape. Deans hair color. Sams skin tone. I'd spent a thousand hours over the last five years looking at that picture that now lay ruined in a puddle of water, and I'd memorized every detail of it.

And I saw bits of those details in the two boys sitting across from me.

I felt my breath turn shaky and I turned back to look at Bobby who was studying my reaction. I took a second and wiped my face of all emotion, something I'd learned to do after my mothers death. I then looked into Bobby's tired eyes.

"So I know who they are. Who are you?"

"A friend of your mothers." He murmurs, his cool facade fading as the edges of his words became clipped. I smiled inwardly to myself. I'd struck a nerve. "Back to you. How much do you know?"

"That I'm somewhere in the country with some people I've never met." I say duly, shooting a look back to Dean and Sam, both whom didn't appear to understand anymore than I did.

"Not about that. About..." Bobby says but looks to Dean and Sam for help. Dean is still staring lividly at me but Sam answers, speaking slowly.

"About...how things really are." He sounds nervous. Him and Bobby look at each other, sharing a private thought.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I grumble, rubbing the spot between my eyes where a headache is forming.

"Demons. Angels. Monsters. All the things that go bump in the night." Dean barks, and my eyes snap up to his, burning with something between rage and horrible sadness. "Its all real. Thats what you saw on the bus, right? A monster?"

A shiver ran down my spine when I thought of the bus. My hand, still bleeding through the bandage, started throbbing at the memory of it. "That wasn't real." I say, meaning it to come out confident but not managing more than a shaky whisper.

"Yes. It was. So is everything. Vampires, werewolves, every monster you've ever-"

"Dean!" Bobby growls, cutting him off. Dean stands, face drawn in fury.

"What Bobby? I'm not going to beat around the goddamned bush. You can Sam can pussyfoot around it all day but whatever the hell she is its not human. She wants to know? Then tell her." Dean bellows, his voice shaking in anger.

Everythings silent for a few seconds, and I feel the floor drop from beneath me as pieces of the puzzle begin to fall together.

The book. The book she always carried.

The book of monsters.

"Your all hunters." I whisper, and all their heads snap to me.

"You know about hunters?" Sam asks in confusion, and at the same time Bobby says suspiciously, "I thought you said you didn't know anything."

Dean just stares.

"Oh God." I whisper, closing my eyes and in a rush remembering every bedtime story my mother ever told me. Pentagrams. Holy water.

Demons and Angels.

"Oh God." I'm shaking. I have to close my eyes. "Oh my God its all real."


End file.
